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I’m back from Gencon! It was great seeing everyone and I’m pretty darn pleased with the results of painting contests. The three pieces I brought all took the gold for their categories and my diorama took Gencon’s best in show trophy. I’m still catching up on sleep, but I’ve been back to the painting table, and tomorrow I’m heading up one of the nearby mountains.

These are the three pieces: M’dusa from Twisted Miniatures, Aurora from Privateer Press, and Research Gone awry (Kingdom Death kitbash).

My second trip to the Crystal Brush was a success! Steampunk Arielle took second in her category and the Kraken’s Mistress won best of show. I had a great time at the convention, and it was wonderful to meet everyone. 🙂

Crystal Brush is right around the corner. I’m going to be sharing sneak peeks of my two projects in the days leading up to it. To get the ball rolling, here are the supporting actors: sea creatures and Paul Muller’s Piranha Boys.

My last post was after Gencon, at the end of August. That’s a very special time for me – it was the end of summer, which meant that I was manically compelled to spend every possible minute in the mountains before the autumn snow made the alpine loveliness unreachable. The mountains have been snow bound for several weeks now and I’ve logged some quality sulking time.

Now it’s time to suck it up, and start posting again. Let’s start with the story of the airline horror which I promised in my last post. It began with my desire to conserve vacation days – I signed up for a red-eye flight to Gencon. Red-eye flights are a little risky – if you miss a transfer, then you usually have to wait until the next day for another chance. This means finding a hotel in the wee morning hours, or sleeping on an airport bench. My flights had a very tight connection, and as the flight got later and later, I began to worry.

I had reached the front of the boarding line, when the lateness of the flight was exactly equal to the length of my connection. Then the flight attendant gave me the worst possible news that painter can hear when getting onto a plane. “We’re out of overhead space, so you’ll need to check your bag.” Experience has taught me that minis come out of checked baggage in multiple pieces, and that last minute checked bags don’t make transfers, especially tight ones. Since Morhavana was at risk, and my classes would have been pretty bad without supplies, there was only one thing to do. I dumped the important contents into a pile, shoved them, under my seat, and checked the mostly empty bag.

While I was thinking it couldn’t get much worse, a young mother and her two year old sat down next to me. The mother’s child management strategy was to keep the kid entertained, at all times. Loudly. As loudly as she was able, and encouraged the two year old to do the same. Here is an excerpt from the non-stop dialog: “WHAT COLOR IS THIS!!” “YELLOW!!!” “THAT’S RIGHT!!!” So much for my plan to sleep on the plane.

The next bit went better. The plane made up a couple of minutes in the air, and landed with enough time to allow me to sprint to my gate and make it through before the doors closed. My arms were full of painting paraphernalia for that mad dash, and I lost some bits and pieces along the way. Thanks to Jim at Darksword for replacing my Clearbrights, and the Paint and Take folks for replacing one of my freehand demo minis. With exactly zero hours of sleep I arrived at Gencon, full of vigor, if not mental clarity.

Enough grousing. Here’s what you came to see – painted minis. Here’s Kristiana from Reaper, with a dragon mostly sculpted by me, except for his head, which is from Darksword.

Morvahna won this year’s Privateer Press grandmaster contest at Gencon. I’m pretty wiped out from the show, but I thought you’d like to see pics of her. I’ll do another update after I’ve caught up on sleep. The show – particularly the traveling bits – were more than usually exciting.